Seacon Saga 2: The Beginning

This morning I found some time to play with my new rainbow colored Seacon set and man, what a time I had. Like I said yesterday, it's a downsized set. Meaning, it's much smaller than the original toys. 

Whenever these knock off toy companies make a Transformers set, they tend to get creative. There's molded over parts, sometimes new parts made to compensate for deteriorating molds. Or in these downsized sets, they seemingly have to re-engineer some of the parts a little. 

The Seacons were a Scramble City style combiner team, meaning any of the limbs would work as any limb. That wasn't the case here, or from what I could tell after a lot of fiddling. Not to mention, the neat 6th member could be a gun wasn't universal either. Which didn't matter as Piranacon doesn't have fists to hold it with. I opted to keep Tentakil out of the combiner since I just love his weird sea monster mode so much. Thanks to ample peg holes and guns, you can fashion a blaster type hand easily. Honestly in combined mode, I really like this toy. The wacky colors look sharp and the sculpt looks really good in a smaller size. 

Going back to the individual team members, the sea monster modes look really great. Snaptrap is as small as the limb bots, which is funny as the smaller size makes for good proportions when combined. They're really good copies of the original toys as well.

In robot mode, some of that knockoff toy new part magic comes in. Leg/mid-sections are serviceable, but are clearly where the company has had to get a little creative. It's still a really nice looking set. While a few parts were omitted and not all the accessories are there, they've all got weapons. Aside from scale and color, they're pretty close approximations of the team. 

The quality is always in question with knock off toys. Sometimes it's a near perfect replica, sometimes it's kinda ok. Sometimes it's apparently made from old soap and turns into powder instantly. For the most part these guys were pretty good. Some of the joints are really loose, while one of Snaptrap's legs was impossible to move. I'm no stranger to knock off toys and some of my old tricks came into making a more stable set.

I absolutely love the Piranacon this set makes. That smaller Snaptrap makes for a different looking torso and the proportions are absolutely wonderful. Normally with Scramble City style combiners, you have a big body with stumpy limbs. Everything is more evened out here and it makes for a better looking robot. I can't help to look at other combiners and imagine them with similar builds.

It was a total surprise when Shawn sent me this and made for an interesting week. I'm pretty grateful for it. I've got a ton of toys, but the ones with stories I really appreciate. Shawn's an awesome friend as is, but dude gets me. He saw some weird shit and knew I would not only like it, but would turn into a week of site content.

Seacon Saga Part 1

Ever have a story that takes two different posts on two different days on your fan blog? Me too! This particular one of those instances began Monday afternoon when Shawn messaged me. He asked if I had checked my mail since Saturday and said maybe I should. 

Before I go any farther, let me explain. I live in a town home neighborhood. The mailboxes are similar to an apartment set up, with them being at the front. Little mailboxes and storage lockers for packages, though usually those are left on door steps. 

So when Shawn says something is waiting for me in a storage locker. I check and... nope. I let him know, he double checks tracking and same info. So, I used the little tracking tool on the Post Office website to let them know something went wrong. I get a generic 'looking into it email' back and when the mailbox was checked, there was a key for a storage locker. Ok, no problem, whoever did the Saturday run must have forgot. Inside the storage locker was... wait for it... another key. The hell?

This key however is not like the other... because it doesn't work on any of the lockers. I get to work and reply to the email. This morning, I call the Post Office and... the manager who wrote me the reply had went on vacation. I think this is actually a Rascal Flats song, your Mom loves them. BTW, ever notice the singer of those dudes looks like the guy who played Duke on old GI JOE commercials? 

Now you and your Mom have something in common. You can talk about how knowing is half the battle and that life is a highway. Speaking of talking with Mom, tell her the Star Brigade toys in that commercial had Action Master Shockwave's art used to represent Hawk. Also tell her that I need her dog to stop shitting in my yard.

So my wife suggests I ask to speak to a manager and I get the supervisor! Who then calls the employee who handles my neighborhood (and usually leaves packages at the door), who then says which box my package is in. Great, because I don't have a key that first and ... know what I'll just check again... still didn't work. So the supervisor has the employee to bring it to my door (as they normally freaking do) when they come. Which they do... without knocking and I have this key that I have no clue what to do with. Guess I'll mail it back?

So what was in the box? A red foil zip-lock type bag with a label that you can zoom in and read. Or if your the type to figure out the title of my posts normally have something to do with the subject, you may have already guessed.

Indeed inside was something amazing, a scaled down set of Seacons in the most pleasant rainbow colored pattern one would never expect. It's a worn out meme to label anything with crazy colors 'G2', but a G2 set of Seacons probably would have looked like this had one been made. That or some random European version of the molds like Rescue Force.

The toys themselves? They're fantastic! Big thanks to Shawn for thinking to send me this rad set. I'll talking about the actual toys tomorrow in the action packed conclusion to this post. Spoiler warning, it won't be that action packed. This is just a blog.